Growing Up, and Letting Go

For those of us that have teenage and young adult children relating to the transitions that we go through as families is likely easy. It really is a journey with twists and turns, bumps and bruises, and plenty of hills to climb with the occasional slope to glide down, thankfully.

Our family is going through it's final stages of residential children and transitioning to the stage of visiting wee ones. This means that our children are growing up and moving on, and our grandchildren are coming to Nana and Papa's to hang out, cook, eat, play, eat, sleep, eat, sing, eat, read, color, garden, and did I mention eat? How soon we forget just how important food is to little ones! Thankfully, Nana loves to cook, especially with wee ones.

Our second oldest daughter got engaged on Valentine's Day with our blessing. She is planning to marry a wonderful young man. They both have a bright future ahead of them. He is a student at a technical college and almost ready to graduate. Kindness emanates from him. She is a tech for a sleep study company preparing to go back to college. With our new son-in-law we will also get another grandchild. He has a daughter just a couple months older than hers, our oldest grand.

So, for those of you that fell behind in our little math equation here we will have SEVEN children and SEVEN grandchildren as soon as the twins get here and daughter number two gets married. This provided that no one else gets pregnant before daughter number two gets married. This puts our family total up to 16! Can you imagine our holiday gatherings in our 1600 square-foot house with NO basement? It's not pretty people!

With these changes come new challenges. The twins that are being born this month are to our daughter that lives in southern Indiana. We are in Michigan. We already have one grandchild there that we are trying to figure out how to maintain a relationship with him, now there will be two more to keep up with. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do for him for his birthday this month. It's just in a few days, and I have no good ideas yet.

My goal is to make traditions with all the grandchildren for the holidays and their birthdays. I would like them to know what to expect from Nana and Papa. Obviously, I need to keep it simple. We're still raising children here, and now we have SEVEN grandchildren to buy for on holidays and birthdays. It is important for me to establish connections with them and for them to know who we are, like for real. I don't want it to be this abstract grandparent existence. I really desire for our grandchildren to be impacted positively knowing that their grandparents are there for them and really care about them and their futures. There is security in knowing that someone loves you and believes in you. I want us to be that anchor for them.

This year there will be much to do, much to learn, much to create, much to share, much to provide, and much love to spread around. We just need to figure out how to do it all. It is my goal to go through this transition as conscious as possible and keep it as simple as possible. Weddings, new babies, holidays and 20+ birthdays on the horizon all in the midst of our homeschooling lifestyle. Just how do we do it and stay sane? I'll let you know what I figure out and learn as I figure things out and learn them...